“ADOPT AN ATHEIST” CAMPAIGN BEGINS

Catalyst January/February Issue 2012

Approximately 80 percent of Americans are Christian, and 96 percent celebrate Christmas. Of the 20 percent who are not Christian, non-believers make up the largest segment, though the number of self-identified atheists is tiny. David Silverman, president of American Atheists, knows this to be true, which is why he is frantically trying to inflate his base. “We want people to realize that there may be atheists in their family,” he told the New York Times, “even if those atheists don’t even know they are atheists.”

We thought that there was some merit in Silverman’s idea, even if he had things backwards, as usual. So in response to him, we recently launched our “Adopt An Atheist” campaign, the predicate of which was, “We want atheists to realize that there may be Christians in their community, even if those Christians don’t even know they are Christian.”

Here is what our campaign entailed. We asked everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area to let them know of his interest in “adopting” one of them. We asked our members to let the atheists know of their sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. We said that the atheists may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

Bill Donohue discussed the urgency of this campaign, “If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who ‘believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.’”